As I understand it, the Batman comics were in the verge of cancellation when the show aired. The show's popularity kept them going. If so, then without the show there wouldn't have been an O'Neill/Adams Batman, an Englehart /Rogers Batman, a Miller Batman, a Dini-Timm Batman, a Burton Batman, a Nolan Batman, etc.

Well, not entirely. Two years before the show came along, the comics were on the verge of cancellation, and Julius Schwartz was brought in to revitalize them, which he did successfully, making it a strong seller again within months. A lot of the changes he made to the comics -- like bringing back the Rogues' Gallery in force -- helped make the show more popular when it came along, and some of the things he did with the comic were designed to make it a more suitable source for the show to adapt.

According to William Dozier (in The Official Batman Batbook by Joel Eisner), the reason ABC decided to do Batman is because they canvassed the public and asked them what comics characters they'd like to see adapted for television. Batman came in third after Superman and Dick Tracy, and they couldn't get the rights to those two. So the show happened because Batman comics were already popular. And that popularity was due to Julie Schwartz.

So it was Schwartz who saved the comic and who contributed to the show's success. But there's no doubt that the success of the show made the comic immensely more popular in turn, and cemented Batman's place as one of the most important characters in the DC stable.

Redfern wrote:

And thanks to Julie Newmar, Catwoman went from wearing skirts in the comics to (forgive the pun) catsuits so tight they may as well have been airbrushed. Thank you, Ms. Newmar; you helped a lot of healthy boys get through puberty with smiles wider than the Joker's!

What I find fascinating about Anne Hathaway's Catwoman getup in The Dark Knight Rises is how very Newmaresque it is. Although it's inspired by the current Darwyn Cooke-designed costume with the goggles, when she has the goggles up in "cat-ear" mode it looks closer to the '66 TV Catwoman costume than to any other costume Catwoman's ever had. And that's intriguing because generally Nolan's version of Batman has been as far from Dozier's as you can get.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors